Category Archives: Evolution

As we noted already (here and here), the Texas Board of Education voted last weekto preserve requirements to exercise critical thinking on key evolution-related topics: the origin of DNA, cellular complexity, the fossil record, natural selection, and more.

Yet media sources and groups that advocate teaching evolution dogmatically are spinning this as a victory. Maybe thats predictable.

The Texas Freedom Network, for one, tweeted: SBOE votes & for the 1st time in 30 years, standards are free of junk science designed to cast doubt on evolution. By this they seem to mean that the standards only require Texas students to learn about the scientific evidence in favor of evolution. But thats flatly false.

The Houston Chronicleoffered the headline, SBOE gives final OK to curb creationism language in science standards. Creationism? That makes little sense. Even Ron Wetherington, speaking for those biology committee members who pushed for one-sided evolution standards, was clear that he didnt think creationism was in the standards. As the Texas Tribune noted: [Wetherington] does not consider creationism a relevant concern since schools are forbidden by law from even talking about it in the classroom.

What, in fact, do these standards accomplish? Don McLeroy, former chairman of the SBOE, commented on the streamlined evolution language:

Hardline evolutionists attempted to hijack the Texas science standards, but their efforts crashed and burned as the Texas State Board of Education not only kept all of the previous evolution-challenging standards of 2009, but made them clearer and stronger.

The new standards have the students compare and contrast prokaryotic and eukaryotic cells, including their complexity, and compare and contrast scientific explanations for cellular complexity, examine scientific explanations for the origin of DNA, and examine scientific explanations of abrupt appearance and stasis in the fossil record.

As a reminder, Science reported back in April 2009, New science standards for Texas school strike a major blow to the teaching of evolution These 2017 standards strike an even bigger blow!

And lets not forget Standard 3A, a process standard for biology instruction that asks students to analyze, evaluate, and critique scientific explanations by using empirical evidence, logical reasoning, and experimental and observational testing. This is alongside Standards 7A, 7C, 7D, 7E which ask students to analyze and evaluate aspects of biodiversity, including natural selection.

In the end, despite hearing widely differing viewpoints, the Board and committee achieved unanimous agreement on these standards. The final outcome is in line with our own Science Education Policy:

Discovery Institute believes that a curriculum that aims to provide students with an understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of neo-Darwinian and chemical evolutionary theories (rather than teaching an alternative theory, such as intelligent design) represents a common ground approach that all reasonable citizens can agree on.

As Donna Bahorich, chair of the Board of Education, said in a Texas Education Agency press release regarding Standards 4A and 6A:

It was clear from testifiers that many who had varied concerns found the compromise language chosen by the board to be acceptable, addressing both the need to streamline content while still encouraging critical thinking by students.

Kenneth Bishop, a retired 35-year veteran teacher in Texas, must be pleased. In a letter to the editor in last Wednesdays Dallas Morning News, he supported the language encouraging critical evaluation of evolution. Mr. Bishop noted:

It was in those classes where my students asked questions, weighed evidence and analyzed competing ideas that they learned and were engaged most fully. Without evaluating an explanations strengths and weaknesses, students wont get experience practicing the real methods of science. They may also be misled into thinking that all scientists agree on the origins of biological complexity and DNA, when they dont.

Under these streamlined standards, Texas teachers and students are encouraged to do what Bishop advocates: engage in critical thinking, learn more about evolution and biology not less! and think like scientists by practicing scientific inquiry. Thats a victory for students, and for high quality education, in the Lone Star State.

Image: science photo stock.adobe.com.

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A Closer Look -- Evolution Advocates Spin Texas Science ... - Discovery Institute

Friday, 28 April 2017 10:09 GMT By Alex Donaldson

Choose your fighter.

Now that Pokemon Go has added all the Gen 2 Pokemon (Gold/Silver/Crystal Game Boy games) to the game, some all new ways to reach classic Pokemon are available in the form of baby Pokemon, or as we briefly called them in the late 90s, pre-evolutions. These are basically versions of Pokemon that evolve into Pokemon were already familiar with from Gen 1.

The top example of a pre-evolution is of course Pichu, the baby Pokemon that becomes Pikachu, but Gen 2 adds a bunch of them to the game including Magby, Smoochum and Tyrogue. On this page its that last one were interested in the little kung-fu capable fighting type who has the ability to become a fighting legend.

Tyrogue can be evolved into three different Pokemon, making it similar to how Eevee can be evolved into a number of different Pokemon each with different skills. Much like Eevee the way you evolve into the potential new Pokemon Hitmonlee, Hitmonchan and Hitmontop depends on some external factors beyond you triggering the evolution. With Eevee we had to put together a detailed page explaining all the Eevee evolution methods, and it only seemed wise to do the same here. So lets do it.

The first step to evolving Tyrogue is well, its to catch a Tyrogue. These little beasts can be found out int he wild as with any Pokemon, but they mercifully can also be found inside 5km Pokemon Eggs, as depicted on our Pokemon Go Egg Chart. Tyrogue is an uncommon egg hatch, which makes it a little less unlikely than basic Pokemon but still not actually that difficult to hatch so get walking and hatching!

Once you have your hands on your Tyrogue youll want to look into evolving it. As with Eevees evolutions, exactly how it evolves is based on an external factor: though where Eevee its down to the Pokemons name or a random chance, Tyrogues evolutions are a lot more predictable, as shown in the video above from YouTube user Yanrique Wright.

Heres the deal:

In order to get your hands on kicking Bruce Lee tribute Hitmonlee youll need to make sure Tyrogues attack is the highest of its main stats. If thats the case, Hitmonlee will be the result when you feed Tyrogue 25 candy to evolve it.

In order to check Tyrogues stats, use the appraisal tool the professor will tell you which of the Pokemons stats is the most impressive.

Jackie Chan-inspired punch master Hitmonchan was available in the wild already, but if you want to evolve it from Tyrogue youll need to make sure Defence is its highest stat. Feed it the 25 candy if thats the case and out pops Hitmonchan.

If you need to find out Tyrogues top stat use the in-game appraisal tool. The Pokemon Professor will let you know which of its stats is most impressive, and for Hitmonchan you need to hope for defence.

Hitmontop is really the Tyrogue evolution that most people want its a new Pokemon for generation 2 and honestly its cool. I mean, it spins about on its spiky head like a spinning top (thus the name) and smashes people with kicks. Its good stuff. Anyway, to get Hitmontop youll need Tyrogues highest stat to be its Stamina / HP. If thats the case, when it evolves itll evolve into Hitmontop.

To find out if Stamina / HP are Tyrogues top stat, use the appraisal tool and get the professor to look at your Pokemon. The professor will flat-out tell you its most impressive stat.

For the record, its not possible to actually influence the stats of your Tyrogue its entirely random, so cross your fingers and hope for good luck. Pokemon that hatch from eggs are more likely to be quicker, and 5km eggs are your fastest way of potentially farming multiple Tyrogue unless youre near a natural nest of the creatures.

As mentioned a couple of times above, if you need to find out which of your stats is top with Tyrogue, the quickest way is to use the appraisal tool you find when you view a Pokemon the professor that helps you out will give you information on the Pokemon, and though vague it does outright tell you the best of its stats.

Dont forget that to farm the candy needed to evolve Tyrogue you can set Tyrogue as your Buddy Pokemon and walk with it as you do, youll be rewarded candy every 5km.

Read more here:

Pokemon Go: Tyrogue evolution guide how to evolve into Hitmonlee, Hitmonchan and Hitmontop - VG247

While natural selection is a big part of evolution, the theory now embraces much more than thatIn a recent investigation, a team of scientists developed a method to test how non-biologicalvariables influence the rates of trait evolution within a group of related species.

The scientific communityhas foundthat temperature impacts biological processes at all levels. It directly influences things like metabolic rates, body size, and productivity. However, theres stilldebate about how temperature influences trait evolution.To get at this question, the scientists used their method to analyze body-size data for almost all existing birds and mammals.

This analysis revealed that past climate is a primary driver influencing the rate at which bird and mammal body sizes have evolved. Though many in the scientific community might have expected that warmerclimates lead to faster rates of evolution, thiswork suggests that the opposite istrue: evolutionary rates are higher during times of global cooling in most groups. This trend is a general feature of the evolution of warm-blooded (endothermic) animals. And it appears to be independent of the ecological or evolutionary history of a species.

[Read the original source here]

The GLP aggregated and excerpted this blog/article to reflect the diversity of news, opinion, and analysis. Read full, original post:As climates cool, adaptation heats up

For more background on the Genetic Literacy Project, read GLP on Wikipedia

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The big chill: Evolution heats up when Earth's climate cools down - Genetic Literacy Project

Pebble has left the building, but who will take its place? Is there even a space for 'geeky' wearables now that fashion has caught up with technology? Montreal company Mighty Cast certainly thinks so and is going all-in on the idea, with a device that's very little about fitness and very much about the connected, hacking self.

You may have heard of the Nex Band last year, but it never actually launched. Now it's back with a new look and a new name the Nex Evolution. After a beta period of focus-group testing, CEO Adam Adelman says Mighty Cast "swallowed the bitter pill" and went back for a redesign, gave the band a facelift, dropped the swappable modules, and went deeper on the digital customisations instead.

Read this: The best Pebble smartwatch alternatives

Now it's back, but what is Nex? If you've used IFTTT (If This Then That) you'll have half an idea in fact, IFTT support is built in but the Nex Evolution offers a more basic proprietary language called When/Do. Simply, 'When I do this, Do that'.

Rather than just giving users a bunch of pre-set functions, the Evolution lets you build your own and share them with other Nex users. You might, for example, have a function where tapping the middle button once turns the band into a music controller, or a When/Do where two taps drops your pin-location onto a map and sends it to your friends. Maybe you just want something to open the garage door the Evolution might be most useful in the smart home. Each of the five on-band buttons is separate and 'hackable'.

It's perhaps a bit of a risky idea, when most tracker wearables on the market right now have a heavy focus on fitness, but Adelman isn't convinced people are getting long-term use from their Garmins, Fitbits and Misfits. "The retention rates only tend to be about two months," he says. "What we found was pretty interesting, after all this testing and especially the demographic we were going after, which is a bit of a younger, kind of teenage, college aged-20-something demographic is that there's no killer app. Everyone wanted to use their device for a different reason."

The idea was to build something "that could be a brand new band every day", says Adelman, and so the company focused on more of the digital customisation for the final product, ditching the physical modular element of the beta version ("People were much less interested in the shareability of the individual mods"). All that said, the Evolution still tracks your steps, calories and distance out of the box (with the accelerometer), and Adelman says they may broaden this if people really want it, but for the most part it's about making cool custom mods and using your arm to converge the real and digital worlds.

You can also set up an inner circle of friends and see the hacks they've created, and one particularly neat 'hack' Adelman describes will make the band light up when it's in proximity of any of your friends. "We're really trying to build up a community around this over time," he says. "We're focusing on as many creative hacks as we can and soon we're going to move into the next stage, which is really community."

For people who want to get more grease on the fingers, there's also IFTTT support and some other APIs. "We've a maker channel so you can program Arduino Robots if you wanted to, so it's like a little API within the app itself for more advanced coders to take advantage of. But for all the simple hacks, it's as simple as three seconds of pressing when and do."

So does this mean Nex is eyeing Pebble's spot? "Not really," says Adelman. "I think Pebble did an amazing job of building a community around that geek chic you talked about, but because it's so much easier to create experiences you don't have to create a separate application for example that's available at a third-party store We're catering towards a younger demographic, a social demo, a maker demo, and to some extent a gaming demo."

It may be in gaming that the band has most of its potential. Mighty Cast has a deeper SDK that it's making available to select gaming partners, and while Adelman won't say who, he hints at using the device with VR and even AR. In New is working on a game called Magic Maru that will be an app, but will also require some activity with the physical band itself. There's even potential here for using the Evolution as an augmented reality gaming device.

In fact, Mighty Cast has been working with Pokmon Go creator Niantic on a wearable for its other location-based smash hit game, Ingress. "One of the verticals we are excited about is augmented reality and casual gaming. Because our band is geo-aware there are all sorts of fun gaming applications we can do with that. We've been working with Ingress developing an interesting proof of concept. We haven't announced a launch date yet for that, but we're pretty excited about it".

The Ingress band will look and behave much like the Nex Band, but instead of solid LEDs it will light up in the Ingress logos. It will also have a few extra capabilities for Niantic's game. Sadly, Adelman confirms there's nothing in the works for Pokmon Go.

He does reveal a partnership with GoPro though, set to be officially announced in the coming weeks, which will let Band users control their action cameras remotely from the wrist something Polar has opened up on its devices too.

Mighty Cast has just soft launched its Evolution Band and plans to ramp up momentum as it heads towards the lucrative Holiday period. We'll be testing it ourselves in the coming weeks to see how much fun the tinker-friendly wearable is. It's undeniably refreshing to have something that sets itself aside from the pantheon of health-focused fitness trackers, but its success will most probably be determined by the community. Adelman describes it as "simple to use, difficult to master".

Challenge accepted.

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How Nex Evolution could take Pebble's throne as the wearable for tinkerers - Wareable

Thursday, 27 April 2017 15:45 GMT By Staff

Pokemon Go players can evolve their Eevee into one of five creatures of their choosing using a particular nickname for each. Heres how to do it with ease.

Eevee is without a doubt one of the coolest Pokemon, and thats not just because its one of the cutest of the original Generation 1 (Red, Blue) Pokemon its also because of the way it evolves. Eevee can evolve into more different Pokemon than any other across all of the generations to this day and that has carried across to Pokemon Go, too.

In Pokemon Go Eevee costs 25 Eevee Candy to evolve and Eevee can be found relatively regularly in the wild and can also be fairly easily hatched from eggs, so candy is easy to grind. Once youve got enough Candy, a caught Eevee can be made to evolve into one of five forms currently: Vaporeon, Jolteon, Flareon, Espeon or Umbreon. The latter two were added to the game in the big Gen 2 Pokemon Go update.

The frist time you evolve an Eevee into a particular evolution you can actually influence it but this only works once for each evolution of Eevee, so be careful. Once youve evolved each type once youll then have to rely on the random chance for which eeveelution (see what I did there?) you get.

Heres how to force each of the five Eevee evolutions.

In order to get yourself a Lightning-type Jolteon, nickname your Eevee to Sparky. Once youve renamed consider restarting the app to double-check the change was registered server-side. Once your Eevee is called Sparky, evolve it to get Jolteon. Jolteon is a fairly strong lightning-type and looks damn cool.

Water-type Vaporeon also requires the renaming trick this time, youll want to name the Eevee Rainer. Again, we recommend you restart the app to check the name has saved to the cloud. Once the name is in place, evolve to get a Vaporeon. Early on in Pokemon Go Vaporeon was regarded as one of the very best Pokemon for gym battles.

Pure fire-type Pokemon are actually pretty few and far between compared to most other types and so that makes Flareon all the more special. To get Flareon, nickname your Eevee Pyro. Dont forget to restart the app and check the name change has processed on Niantics servers. Evolve Pyro and itll become a Flareon, a strong choice if youre in need of a fire-type heavy hitter.

Added in the generation 2 update, Espeon is a psychic-type Pokemon that has a particularly cat-like look about it. Rename your Eevee to Sakura and itll evolve into Espeon. Fans also claim that if you walk 10km with your Eevee and then evolve it in the day theres a higher chance itll come out as Espeon without using the rename trick, too.

The last of the current available Eeveelutions, Umbreon is a fan-favourite mainly because it looks cool as heck. This dark-type Pokemon can be obtained by naming your Eevee Tamao and then spending the candy to evolve it. Fans conjecture also suggests that if you walk 10km with the Eevee as your buddy and then evolve at night it also has a much higher chance to evolve into Umbreon without the rename trick and this certainly matches up to the methods of evolution in the traditional Pokemon games.

If youre wondering where the names come from, they have history. A few of these nicknames should sound familiar to Pokemon fans: the Eevee Brothers in the original anime were named Sparky, Rainer and Pyro. Naming your Eevee after one of these brothers causes it to evolve into their Eevee of choice. An easter egg and a great trick in one!

There are three more types of Eevee Evolution ice-type Glaceon, grass-type Leafeon and Fairy-type Slyveon. These were introduced in later Pokemon generations, and so theyre not yet available in Pokemon Go. Keep your eyes peeled in future updates, however as future generations come to the game so too will more Eevee evolutions and evolution tricks.

You can see the Pokemon Go Gen 1 Eevee changes in action in the YouTube video above from skinzfan602, and the Gen 2 Eevee evolutions in the tweet below from Allissa.

Pokemon Go launched in July 2016 and immediately became one of the most successful apps of all time. The February 2017 Gen 2 update, which added two new Eevee evolutions among 80 Gen 2 Pokemon, is the first major roster expansion since day one.

Read more:

Pokemon Go: Eevee evolution guide how to evolve to Vaporeon, Jolteon, Flareon, Espeon or Umbreon - VG247

Its a great time to be in information technology.

While that statement is true, not everyone clearly understands why (or perhaps has the fortitude to make it so). In the face of a massive movement to public cloudby 2020, 92 percent of worlds workloads will be in cloud, with 68 percent in public and 32 percent in privatemany in IT feel their value in the workplace eroding along with their identity.

That feeling doesnt need to be reality. Businesses are changing the way they operate and are transforming to leverage IT more strategically. IT has a real opportunity toleadthis transformation, not let the transformationhappen to them.

IT has led digital transformations before and can do it again. About 10 years ago, the video security surveillance industry underwent a digital transformation wherein video security systems transitioned from coaxial cable networks to IP-based Ethernet, from analog video on tape to digitally encoded video on disk, and from physically separate networks to consolidating into IT-run data centers. IT was the digital leader here, bringing many improvements to the way in which physical security functions. At the end of the day, the physical security guard remained and in combination with their IT partners, delivered on their charter more efficiently than before.

IT has an opportunity to drive digital transformation again, particularly as many businesses are changing the way they operate. Concerned with disrupting or being disrupted, many businesses are pivoting to become software companies.

Yes, software is eating the world. As I arrive to the SolarWinds corporate headquarters each work day, Im reminded of that fact by literal exampleAMD, a leading chip designer, has shrunk its operations to share its campus with SolarWinds, a global software company.

As businesses shift, CIOs are poised to help IT switch from a cost center to asource of differentiated value in terms of how a business might differentiate from other players in their industry.CIOs are positioned to be in a highly strategic, visible and collaborativeposition within the company.

A recent Harvard Business Review studyshows that while nearly half of lines-of-business leader respondents said they would like to learn more about digital trends from theirCIO, closeto two-fifths said their CIO does not seek to educate and empower line-of-business leaders whenit comes to all things digital. Over a third of the organizations polled said IT does not provide usefulknowledge about technologyor understand which digital knowledge is important to specific business functions. Expectations of CIOs are changing, and it behooves IT to rise to the challenge.

The white knuckles of IT needs to relax their grip and embrace internal customers as their lifeline, not shun those running shadow ITbe an accelerator, not an inhibitor. Understand thatconveniencedrives retail consumer purchasing behavior more so than price. Considering those same individuals bring their consumer behaviors (convenience =agility) to the workplace, its no wonder shadow IT is prevalent and always lurking. IT needs to develop holistic strategies in alignment with the business mission. IT organizations that are digital leaders dont just let hybridhappen to them. In fact, digital leaders are three times more likely to have a comprehensive, enterprisewide strategy for hybrid cloud, according to IBM's report "Growing Up Hybrid: Accelerating Digital Transformation."

Hybrid IT strategies may include outsourcing commodity functions. IT can be the providerandthe trusted broker by enabling lines of business with application support, cloud design, not necessarily equipment. A foremost focus on empowerment of the business missionwhether sourcing or providingis how businesses will leverage IT to renovate I&O and innovate.

In some cases, that strategy may involve factions of IT reporting into different lines of businesses (e.g., marketing and finance). Strategies of hybrid IT organizations embracing public and private cloud are evolving from infrastructure-centric thinking to application-centric thinking, recognizing that operations automation is friend, not foe.

Implementing a strategy is not without challenge. Less than a third of the ITorganizations polled in a recent SolarWindsstudy consider that they have adequate resources to manage hybrid IT environments. Fortunately, any business can excel at digital leadership andmanagement regardless of its size or budget. Strategies may consideraggressively retiring legacy technology where the application and business case allow.

Often its not technology impeding implementation of strategy, but people and process. CIOs can mitigate inhibitors from evolving into a hybrid IT organization by helping their people set aside fear, insecurity and politics. CIOs need to help individuals within their organization to understand their changing jobs, migrate to new roles, and be champions of change in their organizations while continuing to ensure security and continuity.

The digital transformation of today is a hybrid evolution of IT. The broad-sweeping influence technology has on how businesses operate continues to accelerate and leaves no industry untouched. Organizations are learning how to become software companies. Established businesses are being turned upside down and inside out, as new players have a software-centric view of the world.

Current market dynamics are fundamentally changing therelationship businesseshave withtheir ITorganization, and IT must evolve because business leaders need IT more than ever. Its an exciting future ahead anda great time to be in information technology!

This article is published as part of the IDG Contributor Network. Want to Join?

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The hybrid evolution of IT - Network World

A fossilised ancient creature boasting huge pincers resembling can-openers, a hinged two-piece shell and more than 50 pairs of legs has been discovered, shedding light on the evolutionary past of a huge and diverse group of animals.

Researchers say the creature, thought to have lived about 507 million years ago during the Cambrian period, offers insights into the early body plan of mandibulates a group that encompasses creatures including millipedes, crabs and ants. The group takes its name from the presence of mouth parts known as mandibles, which the animals use to help hold or eat food.

Because it is such a big group, the question is why was it so successful, why did it manage to diversify so much?, said Cedric Aria, co-author of the study from the Nanjing Institute for Geology and Palaeontology, in China. We really lacked an insight into the characters, the traits, that really were fundamental to that diversification.

The sturdy-looking creature, adds Aria, was about 10cm long and would have been found walking on the seafloor, perhaps occasionally swimming, and probably fed on soft-bodied animals that were adept at escaping or hiding.

The prey, says Aria, would have been caught by the animal using its two large pincers. When I first started to study this animal I really thought that they looked like one of those old can openers, he said.

The prey, he adds, would then have been passed to the animals many legs under the body which have spine-like features at their base. The spines might have helped to crush the prey and the remains of that prey would have been brought back to the front where the mandibles would have cut the flesh into small pieces and so that facilitated digestion, he said. The mandibles would have been a revolutionary tool to process food.

Previously discovered fossils of similar creatures with two-part shells had lacked details around the head, including evidence of mandibles. As a result, such fossilised animals had been proposed to be early forms of a category of creatures known as true arthropods. This category includes both mandibulates and other invertebrates that have an exoskeleton and segmented body and appendages, including spiders and the extinct marine creatures called trilobites.

But the new finding, published in the journal Nature, squashes the idea. Rather than occurring at the base of the true arthropod family tree, the new discovery suggests that these creatures with two-part shells actually appeared later in the family tree and are in fact early mandibulates.

It might reflect the body plan of the ancestor of that super mega-group, said Aria of the new find, adding that the presence of legs with a segmented, spiked base in the creature was an important feature. Those segmented bases of the limbs actually explain the diversity of the limbs in mandibulates and they explain the origin of the mandibles themselves, said Aria.

Unearthed in recent years at a site near Marble Canyon in the Canadian Rockies of British Columbia, the newly discovered fossilised creature has been dubbed Tokummia katalepsis a nod to the Tokumm Creek that is surrounded by the Marble Canyon and the Greek word for grasping.

Graham Budd, professor of palaeobiology at Uppsala University in Sweden who was not involved in the study, cautiously welcomed the new discovery. If it is true, [this research shows] that a large number of quite important fossils from the Cambrian are actually all close relatives of the modern day crustaceans and insects, he said. This is very significant because for the first time it allows us to really understand the origins of this really important group of organisms.

Read more from the original source:

Pincer-wielding 507m-year-old fossil sheds light on evolution of crabs - The Guardian

AT&T is causing an uproar with its announced plans to launch what it is calling 5G Evolution in more than 20 markets by year-end. The company said 5G Evolution is currently available in Austin, Texas, which is a test location for AT&Ts 5G work and will soon be available in Indianapolis, Indiana, and several more markets including Boston, San Francisco, Chicago, Atlanta, Los Angeles, and Nashville.

But AT&Ts description of 5G Evolution is purposely vague. And the preliminary 5G specification will not be available until year-end. So its pretty clear that 5G Evolution is not a standardized 5G offering.

In the press release, AT&T says 5G Evolution will provide twice the speeds of the companys existing LTE network and will use technologies such as small cells, carrier aggregation, 44 multiple input multiple output (MIMO), and 256 QAM. The service will be coupled with Samsung Galaxy 8 and Galaxy S8 devices, which are not standardized 5G devices.

Those limited details make 5G Evolution sound a lot like Gigabit LTE, which is a service that T-Mobile US demonstrated with Ericsson at Mobile World Congress in early March. In fact, it appears that AT&T may have beat T-Mobile to the punch by marketing Gigabit LTE as 5G Evolution.

At Mobile World Congress, Neville Ray, CTO of T-Mobile US told a small group of reporters that if the company could deliver 1 Gb/s speeds on LTE instead of 5G, the consumer may not know the difference between the two. Theres a lot of chatter about 5G at 1 Gb/s speeds. If you can deliver that on LTE, whats the difference? Whats the difference to the consumer? Ray said. I think in the 5G space there will be a lot of marketing wars.

Interestingly, on AT&Ts earnings call with investors that was held the same day the company announced its 5G Evolution, executives did not mention the offering. In fact, when asked about the companys time frame for deploying 5G, AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson said that because of the standards roadmap, the company would not launch 5G until 2018, and it will likely not be available in scale until devices and equipment are ready in 2019 or 2020.

But Stephenson did go into great detail about the companys spectrum holdings and how the spectrum will set the stage for the companys 5G network deployment.

Stephenson said the company has 60 MHz of fallow spectrum in the low and mid-band spectrum that it has accumulated from auctions, acquisitions, and winning a 25-year contract to build and operate the FirstNet nationwide public safety network. Plus, the company has 39 GHz millimeter (mmWave) band spectrum and 24 GHz band spectrum that it acquired from FiberTower that equals a nationwide footprint. And it may have more mmWave spectrum in the 28 GHz and 39 GHz range if it is successful in its acquisition of Straight Path.

Stephenson acknowledged that there is a competitive offer for Straight Path and said the company is deciding whether or not to respond to that bid with a higher offer. It has just five days to make that decision.

Our goal is to put 1-Gig speeds in our customers hands, no matter where they are on our network, Stephenson said, according to a Seeking Alpha transcript of the earnings call.

Sue is VP of Content and Editor-in-Chief at SDxCentral. Prior to SDxCentral, Sue was the Editor-in-Chief of FierceMarkets Telecom Group. Sue has more than 20 years of experience reporting on the telecom industry, including roles as the Executive Editor at Wireless Week and Managing Editor at Convergence magazine. She has also worked as an analyst for Paul Kagan Associates, specializing in wireless and broadband technologies. She can be reached at smarek@sdncentral.com

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AT&T Kicks Off 5G Marketing Wars With '5G Evolution' - SDxCentral

BBC News

'World's oldest fungus' raises evolution questions BBC News Fungus-like life forms have been found in rocks dating back 2.4 billion years. The fossils, drilled from rocks that were once beneath the seafloor, resemble living fungi. Scientists say the discovery could push back the date for the oldest fungi by one ... and more »

The rest is here:

'World's oldest fungus' raises evolution questions - BBC News

Courtesy of Princeton University Press

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. Evolutions Bite by Peter Ungar, Distinguished Professor of anthropology and director of the Environmental Dynamics program at the University of Arkansas, will be released in May by Princeton University Press.

Advance issues of the book have already received critical acclaim.

The National Science Teachers Associations NSTA Recommends describes the book as about as close to a tour de force as a science book is likely to get.

Evolutions Bite spans the globe, combining scientific breakthroughs with vivid narrative to present a unique perspective on our human journey by comparing todays human teeth to those of our ancestors to teach us how we became human. Ungar also brings together cutting-edge advances in the study of human evolution and climate change as well as new approaches to uncovering dietary clues based on fossil teeth.

Ungar describes how a tooth's "foodprints" distinctive patterns of microscopic wear and tear provide telltale details about what its owner actually ate in the past. These clues, combined with groundbreaking research in paleoclimatology, show how a changing climate altered the food options available to human ancestors. When the diet changed, the species changed, and Ungar traces how that diet and an unpredictable climate determined who among our ancestors was winnowed out and who survived. He also shows why some ancestors transitioned from the role of foragers to farmers. Finally, by sifting through the evidence and the scars left on teeth Ungar makes the important case for what might or might not be the most natural diet for humans.

Pre-release events have nearly sold out, with lines for Ungars autograph lasting an hour.

His related blog post, The True Human Diet, published last week on the Scientific American website, garnered thousands of likes and shares on social media within 24 hours. I seem to have struck a chord, Ungar said.

Ann Gibbons, author of The First Human: The Race to Discover Our Earliest Ancestors, recommends Evolutions Bite for anyone who wants to know where we came from and how we ended up with such messed up teeth and jaws." Rick Potts, director of the Human Origins Program in the Smithsonian Institution, called the book a compelling tale that shows how the union of scientific fields shapes the profound story of food, diet and evolution."

Ungar said that he hopes that, in reading the book, when people smile and look in a mirror, they will be reminded that their teeth are a legacy of our evolution one that connects us all to our distant ancestors and to each other.

Peter S. Ungar is Distinguished Professor of anthropology and director of the Environmental Dynamics Program at the University of Arkansas. He researches the diets of modern primates, early hominins and the mammals coexisting with them. He is author or co-author of more than 130 scientific papers and

author of Teeth: A Very Short Introduction and Mammal Teeth: Origin, Evolution, and Diversity and the editor of Evolution of the Human Diet: The Known, the Unknown, and the Unknowable.

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Ungar's New Book, 'Evolution's Bite,' to Be Released in May by Princeton Press - University of Arkansas Newswire